"WALL-E": Inspired By "Hello Dolly"

NEW YORK — Jerry Herman, eyes welling with tears, could hardly believe what he was hearing as he watched the new animated blockbuster "WALL-E." The composer of the Tony-winning musical "Hello, Dolly!" had licensed songs from the 1964 show to Pixar _ The Walt Disney Co.'s computer animation arm _ but he had no idea that his music and lyrics would factor so prominently in the story line of the sci-fi robot romance. "I'm still blown away by the fact that two songs of mine that are close to 50 years old have been used as the underpinning" of the movie, Herman told The Associated Press in an interview from Los Angeles. Writer-director Andrew Stanton used the tunes "Put on Your Sunday Clothes" and "It Only Takes a Moment" to express the psyche of the love-starved, trash-compacting robot WALL-E. "My eyes were really wet at both the opening and the closing of the film, and just the wonderful way those songs were used to make him more human," Herman said. "That's really what they ... [link]